darkstar@wam.umd.edu (Martin Walser) (04/19/91)
Some days ago I posted about the slowness of Sierra releasing its games
for the Mac platform.... Well, they're still slow, but at least they're working
on it...
SPACE QUEST III is now shipping for the Mac.
Yay... It's about time... I've been waiting 2 years since I killed Vohaul in
SQ2 for the damn sequel. Good work, guys.... but let's see a few more titles,
eh? For all this time, I do hope they imporved the graphics over the blockiness
of the older titles (EGA ports, most likely). Ah well... I'll buy it none-the-
less.
Mart <darkstar@cscwam.umd.edu>craparotta@kyoa.enet.dec.com (Joe Craparotta) (04/19/91)
In article <1991Apr18.185952.18224@wam.umd.edu>, darkstar@wam.umd.edu (Martin Walser) writes... > > Some days ago I posted about the slowness of Sierra releasing its games >for the Mac platform.... Well, they're still slow, but at least they're working >on it... > > SPACE QUEST III is now shipping for the Mac. > >Yay... It's about time... I've been waiting 2 years since I killed Vohaul in >SQ2 for the damn sequel. Good work, guys.... but let's see a few more titles, >eh? For all this time, I do hope they imporved the graphics over the blockiness >of the older titles (EGA ports, most likely). Ah well... I'll buy it none-the- >less. > >Mart <darkstar@cscwam.umd.edu> I have talked to numerous User Groups about Sierra and the unwillingness to do anything for the Mac... We have all decided to BOYCOTT them until they turn around.. After chatting with them, they only had excuses for the WHOLE APPLE line... Whatever they had put out, was just a conversion and wasn't worth the disk's that they were on... When they change, we'll revaluate our positions... Joe Craparotta Craparotta@level.dec.com --or-- ...!decwrl!level.dec.com!craparotta --or-- craparotta%level.dec@decwrl.dec.com discalimer: The above are my Personal views and do NOT represent those of my EMPLOYER.. They don't listen to me anyway.. :-))
bluecow@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Tobish E Smith) (04/20/91)
In article <1091@sousa.ltn.dec.com> craparotta@kyoa.enet.dec.com (Joe Craparotta) writes: >I have talked to numerous User Groups about Sierra and the unwillingness to >do anything for the Mac... We have all decided to BOYCOTT them until they >turn around.. After chatting with them, they only had excuses for the WHOLE >APPLE line... Whatever they had put out, was just a conversion and wasn't >worth the disk's that they were on... > >When they change, we'll revaluate our positions... > > > >Joe Craparotta Craparotta@level.dec.com > --or-- ...!decwrl!level.dec.com!craparotta > --or-- craparotta%level.dec@decwrl.dec.com > >discalimer: The above are my Personal views and do NOT represent those of my >EMPLOYER.. They don't listen to me anyway.. :-)) I'll probably take a lot of flak for this posting, but so be it. A lot of people complain most vociferously about Sierra's lack of Mac interface use or the fact that their adventures have chunky pixels. I am willing to abide by this much more from Sierra than I am from a product such as Curse of the Azure Bonds or Bane of the Cosmic Forge. This seems like a double standard, I suppose, but I'll try to explain. First of all, Sierra's motivation has always been to create games for their generic graphics engine, allowing as many computers as possible to have access to their games. Because of this, their graphics always cater to the lowest common denominator. Sierra isn't just short-shrifting the Macintosh computers; Amigas and IBMs with good graphics boards get the same treatment (I think the latest King's Quest is an exception, though...). But this is their policy; they decided to sacrifice the full potential of the target machines for the sake of portability. I find this more acceptable since this has _always_ been their position. I contrast this with Sir-Tech, which initially came out with a few very nice Mac products and now this Bane thing. Now this paragraph opens up two big points of contention: 1. "So you like Sierra because their games are _consistently_ bad???" 2. "Laziness by Sierra is no excuse." Let me try to address the first one first. This is subjective, of course, but I don't think the Sierra games are bad. I enjoy playing them, and (on my color Mac II) I think that the graphics, while far from detailed, can be quite amusing and fun, thanks to some occasional humorous animation and the 3D aspect of the environment (which some people hate, I know). Sierra adventures are far from difficult. I don't think that the plot of most of their games would really merit the amount of disk and memory resources required for a 640x480, 256-color version. The chunky graphics allow fairly large areas of play to be contained in a small amount of disk space. I _do_ think that a game such as Bane _would_ merit from such detail, given its large size and complex gameplay. The detailed graphics (on 32 disks or whatever) would give it a feeling of grandeur that is perhaps worthwhile for its plotline. As for the second objection, that of laziness, it doesn't seem to me that Sierra is lazy. They have over a dozen games availale, all of them requiring a lot of art work and music composition, in addition to coming up with a plot and some interesting puzzles. Given the near-worthlessness of the Mac game market in relation to the IBM world, Sierra probably only has 1 or 2 Mac programmers onhand. I would much rather see the energy of these programmers being devoted to the porting of the next generation of the generic Sierra graphics system to the Mac so that I can play those dozens of games that have been coming out, rather than see them spending the next several months making a gorgeous full-color, full-rez version of _one_ Sierra game. I can't seem to justify Bane in the same fashion. Here, we are talking about only one game. Seems like a few more weeks or months of effort to make the program Mac-like and better resolution would have resulted in many fewer angry letters to Sir-Tech and bad electronic reviews. By the way, last time I checked there were about 200 messages on one Bane thread on the CI$ Macfun forum. In the final analysis, I enjoy the frivolity and lightness of the Sierra games I've played, and I would love to see more of them appear on the Mac. I try to be sympathetic to their situation because I would rather see Leisure Suit Larry II in simulated EGA on my Mac than not see it at all. Tob bluecow@unix.cis.pitt.edu